


Growing Wings

by floorcoaster



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floorcoaster/pseuds/floorcoaster
Summary: Pansy is two things: completely Slytherin and inconveniently in love.
Relationships: Pansy Parkinson/Percy Weasley
Comments: 52
Kudos: 70
Collections: Magic Begins From Within - A Dumbledore's Armada Flash Fest Challenge





	Growing Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Magic_Begins_From_Within](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Magic_Begins_From_Within) collection. 



> Thanks to my beta for their help in this.
> 
> Written in response to the prompt: "Write them back"

_There are dreams worth following and dreams worth chasing…_ _And then there are dreams worth growing wings and flying for._

_-Ariana_

* * *

There were two things Pansy knew without a doubt.

One: she was a Slytherin through and through. She was ambitious and fractious and only looked out for herself. Every move she made was calculated, every word carefully measured.

Two: she was obnoxiously, hopelessly in love with Percy Weasley. He was scathingly ambitious. So much so that she honestly couldn't believe he wasn't sorted into Slytherin. It must have been his family because some of the things he said and did shocked _her._

But Percy was also everything she wasn't: kind, thoughtful, and principled. He spoke carefully, meticulously; there was never any doubt as to what he meant.

However, being in love with Percy was extremely inconvenient, as she had taken a solemn vow in fourth year, along with Daphne and Tracey, never to fall in love. Love was messy, it too often led to heartache, and they had plans for their futures that didn't involve emotional attachments. They certainly wouldn't marry for love. _Merlin forbid!_ They might entertain companionship now and then, enjoy a dalliance or two, but there was no room for love. They'd even performed a vow of sorts not to let a man have any power over any of them.

That was why her relationship in school with Draco had been such a success. She didn't care what he did, so long as _she_ was the one on his arm, the one who, at the end of the day, could lay claim to him. He'd been the most sought after Slytherin of any age after fourth year, and he'd belonged to her.

After the war, she'd fully expected to pick things up with Draco right where they'd been forced to leave off: a bright future full of balls and gowns and ruling pureblood society. But the berk had the nerve to go and fall in love with someone else, someone with whom she could never compete—Hermione Granger, to be precise. It took him five years to win her, and Pansy had watched every rise and fall of their relationship with bated breath, hoping to see it come crashing down.

It hadn't.

When they finally married seven years after the war ended, Pansy felt bereft. None of her friends had any sympathy for her; apparently everybody knew it would happen and she should have given up years ago. They thought she'd fallen in love with Draco, which couldn't be further from the truth. Honestly, she barely tolerated him.

But he was her ticket to a life of extravagant leisure, and she hated losing that. It was quite a blow, one that took her longer than it should have to recover from. When she did, finally, she realized almost all of her friends were either married or in serious relationships.

Daphne, the ultimate traitor, had somehow managed to snag Harry _bloody_ Potter, insisting that she'd married because she loved him and not for the prestige of marrying the savior of the wizarding world.

Pansy didn't believe it for a long time, until the proof became impossible to ignore.

With two of her best friends married to Gryffindors, Pansy found herself tossed amongst them more than she'd ever imagined in her worst nightmares. But it was the unexpected invitation to the Burrow for Christmas dinner nine months ago that marked the beginning of her doom.

She'd visited a few times, always reluctantly, and in that regard, this occasion was no different. What _was_ different, however, was for the first time, Pansy noticed Percy. She couldn't recall having seen him there before, and the Weasley girl claimed he was always working.

Percy was quiet, reserved. He didn't speak much, but there was something about his jaw that drew her attention. One could slice cheese on the hard line, and her mouth went dry. But it was his eyes, dark and brooding, sad yet calculating, that captured her. She made an effort to sit near him, a few seats down and across the table, but it was close enough to hear him speak, which would surely put an end to whatever insanity she was experiencing.

It did not happen.

His voice set her nerves on fire in the best way, and she found herself leaning in to hear the conversation she wasn't part of. Surely the initial shock would wear off the more she heard him speak.

It did not happen.

Even still, Pansy might have escaped his pull. But a commotion at one end of the table drew the attention of the other end, Percy's end. They all turned to look, and Percy's gaze fell on her.

His eyes, a deep, rich brown, were unguarded, and she parted her lips in a silent gasp. She saw in them an unfathomable sadness, a depth that both frightened and excited her at the same time. They started at each other for three heartbeats, longer than anything considered reasonable. Only when his attention was drawn away did Pansy remember to breathe.

Since that day, she'd struggled, still refusing to allow herself to fall in love— _especially_ with a Weasley. Nevertheless, she did her best to find reasons to see him. At first, she lied to herself, said that it was for information gathering purposes only. The flaw was that the only information she sought related to whether she kept feeling things whenever she saw him.

She found reasons to go to the Ministry, to his floor, to his department. The problem was, all she ever did was look at him. They'd never once spoken. Realizing that this would be the move that squashed her body's pesky reactions to him, she decided a simple scheme to initiate a conversation.

On the verge of implementing it, she straightened her shoulders and knocked sharply on his door.

He sounded distracted when he called for her to enter.

Pansy took a deep breath, her heart pounding hard, and opened it.

Percy looked up, brow furrowing slightly as their eyes met. Pansy's breath caught just as it had at the Burrow.

"Yes?"

Blinking, she gathered herself. "I was told to come here to arrange a Portkey."

He merely stared at her. "A Portkey?"

"Yes. They mentioned International something or other." It was a complete fabrication, but this was her plan. She glanced around as though looking for a sign. "That's where I am, is it not?"

Percy set down his quill, carefully capped his inkwell, and stood. His expression betrayed nothing, and Pansy felt almost naked before his clinical gaze. She blushed, for Merlin's sake!

"I'm afraid you're in the wrong place. Miss..."

"Parkinson. Pansy Parkinson." _Surely_ he had to have known that.

"Miss Parkinson. The Portkey office is on a different level. It has nothing to do with our office." He paused a beat. "Why don't I walk you there?"

She exhaled sharply. "Alright."

For some unfathomable reason, it took half an hour to reach the Portkey office, not that Pansy minded. He waited while she spoke to the secretary and made up a story for why she needed a Portkey, then apologized dramatically when she said she didn't have all the information she needed and she'd have to come back later.

He didn't say a word, watching her with his piercing gaze. Then he walked her all the way to the Atrium, his hands tucked into his pockets the whole time.

Just as she was about to step into the green flames, he asked her out, almost as an afterthought. Breathless, she accepted, and they'd been dating ever since.

Dating was absolutely fine. It was permitted in the bylaws she'd agreed to in fourth year. The problem was that she'd fallen in love with him. His quiet strength, his sharp tongue, his absolutely brilliant hands—the gravity in his eyes.

The first night they kissed, her entire world shifted.

The first time they made love was transcendent.

She'd never known such intimacy, such passion was possible. She was very much in danger of losing sight of everything she'd ever wanted.

Percy was a man of careful words, both spoken and written. The night he first asked her out, he wrote to her. It wasn't much, but it was clearly straight from the heart. Since then he'd been writing to her continually, and his words had a way of seeping into her very soul. He didn't write much, just a few lines of verse, but they never failed to steal her breath, make her stomach swoop, and set her heart racing.

He sometimes struggled with what to say, a holdover from a time in his life when nothing he could say was sufficient. The war and his role in it had changed him, and he sought now to be more introspective, to think long before speaking or acting.

During a light-hearted date at a country fair one Saturday in June when he'd told her he loved her, she hadn't known how to respond. She'd frozen on the spot; everything changed in that instant, with those three little words.

Not even the depth of her feelings for him could draw the words from her that she knew he longed to hear. Theirs was an unlikely love, and despite her heart's attachment to his, she still couldn't allow herself to fall—slip, tumble, trip—over that precipice.

Even though she _did_ love him.

_Desperately._

But now she had a problem, gracefully written on a small piece of parchment.

It had been three weeks since his confession, and while they had continued to see each other and carry on as though nothing had happened, she'd felt him slowly pulling away in the absence of her reciprocity. Away was the last place she wanted him to go, but still, she stubbornly clung to the vow she'd made, unwilling to consider an alternative. For a time, she'd thought she could marry him and keep her vow, but that wasn't an option anymore. They were at a crossroads, and Percy seemed to know it.

_Pansy,_

_You have my heart, my soul, my every breath._

_This reality will slowly crush all three unless I know how you feel._

_I do not delude myself; I know the next move doesn't reside with me. If it did, I would move the heavens and the earth and the seas to prove my love for you is true, enduring, unwavering. All I can do is wait._

_I beg you to consider my heart. My soul. My breath. They wait for you._

_Percy_

A tear slipped down her cheek as she reread it. Really loving Percy would destroy all her hard work. It would betray her friends—even though they'd both already done so to her. She was the lone holdout, the one who was determined to have her castle in the sky, unencumbered and beholden to no one.

Yet Percy had effortlessly confessed that she had tremendous power over him. He made it obvious whenever they were together. She could crush him with a single word, and that knowledge was heady. But she didn't want to. Rather, she wanted to fold into that power, to take it, reshape, and give it back to him.

That realization was terrifying.

It was also thrilling. The thought of giving _him_ the power she held made her dizzy.

All she had to do was respond to his letter. She never had before; she'd always simply waited until she saw him to thank him, to kiss him, to drag him to her bed because she'd been able to think of nothing else. But if she wrote it—if she put ink to her heart and gave wings to her love—he could keep that, hold those words, press them close.

Pansy wiped her tears and sat at her writing desk.

Blue ink. Eagle quill.

The scratch of the metal tip against the parchment.

The greatest gift she had ever given.

_Dear Percy._


End file.
